South Korea bans all new ICOs

09/29/2017

It became known that, following the experience of China, South Korea also tightened its attitude towards ICO and crypto-currencies. The regulator said on Friday that from now on, raising funds through the initial placement of tokens will be banned.

J. Patrick Fischer

The Commission for the Supervision of the Financial Sector (FSS) decided to get rid of the "gray" zones in the legislation and protect consumers from fraud. The department argues that the virtual currency trading should fall under strict control and monitoring.

The regulator clarified that today's announcement does not mean that the government takes on the job of integrating virtual currencies into the financial system, but will monitor the market to introduce additional measures, if necessary.

The question of the extent of the ban is causing confusion in the Korean community. According to media reports, all types of ICO will be banned in the country, or it will only affect ICO launched by Korean start-ups, but will not spread to private investors.

Previously, there was information that the agency plans to get rid of anonymity in the performance of crypto-currency transactions. For this, an authentication system may be introduced. It also mentions the creation of mechanisms to track suspicious transactions.

Chinese regulators decided to close the crypto-exchange exchanges, and, according to media reports, are going to introduce a complete ban on all channels for selling and buying crypto currency in the country. The authorities reported their position to several leading representatives of the sector at a private meeting in Beijing, one of the Wall Street Journal informants, who was present at the meeting, said. The People's Bank of China earlier this month found ICO illegal and demanded the immediate cessation of all such operations.

During this time, the daily trading volume of Bitcoin on the stock exchanges of the country declined, while the market of the whole country crashed by $ 40 billion against the background of the stoppage of trading in the largest Bitcoin exchanges in China.

The Korean ban on ICO, which followed just a few weeks after the Chinese, could have far-reaching consequences depending on the scale. Korea was considered one of the markets to which the ICO will move after the ban in China, while it was recently announced that the country will open the largest exchange of crypto-currencies, which can support more than 100 altcoins.